BREAKING: City Reaches Deal with Providence College

The nearly yearlong pursuit by the city of Providence to increase the amount of payments in lieu of taxes from nonprofit universities and hospitals is almost complete.

Mayor Angel Taveras and city leaders on Tuesday are expected to announce a memorandum of agreement with Providence College, the final holdout among the city’s major nonprofit institutions. The City Council sent the agreement to the ways and means committee Monday and is expected to approve the deal in short order.

Under the agreement, Providence College will make $3,842,607 in additional payments to the city by 2021, including $1 million upfront. In exchange, the city will give up 80,850 square feet of city-owned streets adjacent to the campus, including parts of Huxley Ave, Cumberland Street and Wardlaw Ave.

The amount Providence College is agreeing to pay is on top of the payments in lieu of taxes it agreed to make in 2003 when the city’s nonprofit colleges reached a dead to pay the city an additional $40 million by 2023. Under that deal, Providence College is slated to have its annual payments grow incrementally from $264,262 last July to $311,287 by the end of the deal.
Since calling on the major nonprofits to pay more to the city last February, Taveras has also reached agreements with Johnson & Wales University, Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, Lifespan, Care New England and CharterCARE that will pay the city close to $50 million over the next decade.